Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2384: Grand Disciple [Bonus]

[Bonus Chapter thanks to Chronotitan <3]

Sylas and Yamero stepped through the rainbow clouds and entered a world that should have been familiar, yet the first thing Sylas noticed was how much brighter everything had become.

The World of Spirits still stretched out as an endless forest, with enormous trees rising between rolling hills and streams winding beneath translucent roots, but reality no longer seemed capable of deciding exactly where anything ended.

Leaves carried colors that shifted when Sylas changed the angle of his gaze, light passed through trunks before somehow reflecting from their surfaces, and even the shadows contained faint shades that shouldn’t have been visible to human eyes.

It was almost like looking at the world through a filter that reflected every color on the spectrum at once, including several Sylas couldn’t have named even if he wanted to.

Some branches looked perfectly solid until the wind passed through them, at which point their edges dissolved into drifting motes of light, while distant flowers seemed illusory until their scent reached him from kilometers away.

The strangest part was how natural it all felt, as though the World of Spirits had always been this vibrant and Sylas simply hadn’t possessed the perception necessary to see it.

Yamero drew in a long breath and looked around with a smile that carried none of his usual mockery. "It’s good to be home."

Sylas continued walking through the forest while Yamero lingered for another moment, taking in trees and streams he probably hadn’t expected to see again like this. He eventually caught up, his gaze wandering toward the rainbow light shifting between the canopy. "How many people do you think actually qualified to come in here?"

"It won’t matter in the end."

Yamero chuckled as he glanced sideways at him. "Typical Sylas answer. Why waste time counting people when you can just make the number irrelevant?"

Sylas didn’t respond, which Yamero took as confirmation enough, and the two continued forward while the forest subtly rearranged itself around their steps. Yamero watched a silver vine curl away from his foot before sinking back into the earth, then looked toward a distant tree whose branches seemed to exist in several places at once.

"There really is something special about this world."

He remained quiet for several seconds before continuing. "Do you think this is related to the system trying to perfect a Path for the Will Stat, or does it have more to do with the Thryskai being Demons?"

"It may very well be both." Sylas brushed his fingers across a leaf as they passed, feeling the Will contained within it react before the physical structure did. "I can see the thought process behind it, but the method is flawed."

Yamero looked over with interest, and Sylas continued without slowing his steps. "Constitution is the foundation of everything physical, while Will has always lacked an equivalent foundation the system could properly define. If you could link the two, then in theory you could root Will into something stable enough to create the path the system has failed to establish until now."

"So Beast Heaven and Skai Heaven," Yamero replied, his smile fading into thought. "One carrying Constitution, one carrying Will."

"That would be the obvious interpretation, but perfecting Will requires understanding both halves of it. Demonic Will and Real Will aren’t separate paths you can choose between, they’re opposing expressions of the same foundation, and any complete Path of Will would need to comprehend both."

Yamero’s eyes narrowed slightly as he considered that. "Which makes the Thryskai useful if they’re Demons."

"Useful as a proxy," Sylas corrected. "That’s the problem."

Yamero tilted his head.

"Will is already the foundation," Sylas continued. "Trying to perfect the foundation by relying on an external source is backwards. If your answer to an incomplete Will Path is to borrow Constitution, Beast Wills, Demonic Will, or anything else to stabilize it, then you’ve already admitted that you don’t understand what Will itself is supposed to do."

Yamero rubbed his chin, though his eyes kept moving through the forest as though he was comparing Sylas’ explanation against the world around them. "Sounds like you’re blaming the system again."

"Not yet." Sylas looked toward the shifting canopy overhead, where rainbow light flowed through branches that were both physical and illusory at once. "That’s what makes this place interesting. Everything happening here feels too natural for me to conclude that the system forced it into existence."

Yamero’s grin returned. "So either the system finally had a good idea, or something else built the answer before it could."

"What a curious assessment you’ve got there, Grand Master."

The unfamiliar voice came from above them, but Sylas didn’t bother looking up immediately, nor did the title earn much of a reaction from him. Yamero, on the other hand, stopped walking and stared at Sylas with enough confusion that the stranger temporarily became secondary.

"When’d you get a disciple?"

"I just picked one up by accident."

Yamero blinked several times.

Laughter spilled through the forest as a massive fountain pen descended between the trees, stopping several meters above the ground before the young man standing atop it stepped off. His old-fashioned trench coat flapped behind him as he landed with light steps beside Sylas, his backwards cap sitting crooked over his hair while several pencils remained tucked behind his ears.

"That sounds exactly like him." The young man shook his head while the fountain pen shrank behind him, returning to an ordinary pencil that he caught without looking before sliding it beside the others. "My master’s always been unserious, so that part doesn’t surprise me at all, but when I heard he’d suddenly gotten himself a master, I almost thought somebody was screwing with me."

Yamero slowly turned toward Sylas with a grin beginning to form. Sylas ignored him.

The young man seemed even more entertained by that response and stepped around Sylas once, openly inspecting him from several angles without the slightest concern that the behavior might be rude. "Then I heard who it was, and that made even less sense. Sylas Grimblade wasn’t exactly the name I expected to find sitting above my master in the family tree."

He stopped directly in front of Sylas and leaned forward slightly, his eyes sparkling with curiosity. "So tell me, Grand Master, what trick did you use to ensnare that old man? More importantly, can I use it too?"

The question had barely left his mouth before his expression suddenly changed.

"Wait, wait, that’s not important yet."

He straightened and held out one hand toward Sylas, blinking with such exaggerated innocence that Yamero finally failed to restrain his laughter.

"Where’s my present?"